History of House

House music is a style of electronic dance music initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American, Latino, and gay communities, It was the first genre to break the racial barriers and have a mixed crowd primarily to dance, Firstly in Chicago’s Warehouse nightclub with the legendary Frankie Knuckles pioneering the new House sounds from the traditional disco genre, then in New York’s Loft Dave Mancuso and Paradise Garage with resident Larry Levan introducing the new sounds to the East Coast. The new wave of dance music moved over to Detroit with a tougher sister genre “Techno” being born with pioneers such as Carl Craig and Juan Atkins, Eventually the new across the phenomenon Atlantic to Europe before becoming infused in mainstream pop & dance music worldwide.

The music was still essentially disco until the early 1980s when the first stand-alone drum machines were invented. House tracks could now be given an edge with the use of a mixer and drum machine. Early house music producers like Frankie Knuckles created similar compositions from scratch, using samplers, synthesizers, sequencers, and drum machines. House was also influenced by mixing and editing techniques earlier explored by disco DJs, producers, and audio engineers like Walter Gibbons, Tom Moulton, Jim Burgess, Larry Levan, Ron Hardy, M & M and others who produced longer, more repetitive and percussive arrangements of existing disco recordings.

House music is strongly influenced by elements of soul- and funk-infused varieties of disco. Initially it wasn’t taken seriously until it gradually dawned on people that house wasn't just another phase of club culture, it was club culture, the continuing future of dance music. The reason? It's simple. People like to dance to House.